


You’re totally welcome on my lawn, but I wish you wouldn’t pee on the grass

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [10]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23102389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Originally posted: December 28, 2016.https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/155085710349/youre-totally-welcome-on-my-lawn-but-i-wish-youUploaded for day 10 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.It shows evidence of my rising sense that fandom meta is being taken very seriously while not actually having any journalistic and academic standards. OTPodcast was pretty fun, but they, like most fannish podcasts, roused my ire by sounding authoritative while accidentally spreading conventional wisdom that is... well... bullshit.Those tumblr age stats are from August 3, 2014. They're the best we have. My guess is that you should probably add five years to them to get a sense for who's on Tumblr now.Yes, this is where that Escapade panel title came from.
Series: March Meta Matters [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	You’re totally welcome on my lawn, but I wish you wouldn’t pee on the grass

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: December 28, 2016.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/155085710349/youre-totally-welcome-on-my-lawn-but-i-wish-you
> 
> Uploaded for day 10 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.
> 
> It shows evidence of my rising sense that fandom meta is being taken very seriously while not actually having any journalistic and academic standards. OTPodcast was pretty fun, but they, like most fannish podcasts, roused my ire by sounding authoritative while accidentally spreading conventional wisdom that is... well... bullshit.
> 
> Those tumblr age stats are from August 3, 2014. They're the best we have. My guess is that you should probably add five years to them to get a sense for who's on Tumblr now.
> 
> Yes, this is where that Escapade panel title came from.

I see a lot of young-ish fans on Tumblr being uncomfortable with the idea of “old people” still being in fandom. Even episode 17 of One True Podcast, [“Stomping On Each Other’s Lawns - Generational Divides in Fandom”](https://otpodcast.dreamwidth.org/5592.html), which was trying to have people from both sides of “the generation gap” actually had fans in their early 20s and late 20s and referred to the fact that there were even some people in their 40s and 50s kicking around tumblr–acknowledging older fans while implicitly claiming they’re much rarer than in reality.

[Tumblr is:](https://unwrapping.tumblr.com/post/93716151897/age-demographics-tumblr)

  * 13-17 - 15%
  * 18-34 - 41%
  * 35-54 - 29%
  * 55+ - 15%

There are plenty of very young people on tumblr. There are plenty of not-so-young people on tumblr. It’s quite a spread.

AO3 was proposed in 2007, almost a decade ago. The people who jumped on board to help build it initially were not primarily students. We were mostly adults with careers already; that’s what gave us the skills to take on a major project like that. A decade later, I am in my mid-30′s. Some are younger; many are much older.

There was that silly wank a while back about the X-Files supposedly being for teens the same way Buffy was marketed for younger people… only The X-Files was blatantly marketed for an adult demographic back in 1993 when it premiered. Twenty-something plus twenty-three years equals a fanbase in its late 40s. The venerable X-Files archive, Gossamer, was started by people who are now officially Old. Same with Fanfiction.net, MediaMiner, and all of the other great fandom infrastructure we’ve known and loved.

I hate that “The kids these days” shit. Young people are just as welcome in fandom as anyone else.

But I wish you guys wouldn’t sell yourselves short by thinking that you have to be ready to build AO3 when you’re a teenager and that you’re passé and must abandon all of your hobbies by 30.

Mainstream media is already going to tell you that adult women are required to take care of other people’s children instead of taking care of ourselves. Culture is already going to tell you that old women can’t have fun or seek pleasure, that women in general are suspect and can’t be trusted to read “problematic” books without being brainwashed.

Fandom is here to tell you that other people’s kids can be your friends if you both choose it, but you’re nobody’s free therapist, nanny, or censorship board. Fandom is here to tell you that you can backbutton when you want, but you can also read what you want, even if it’s “bad”. Fandom is here to tell you that you can enjoy your hobbies for the next however many decades until they carry you out feet-first.


End file.
